


the true shield

by awkwardspiritanimals



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-07
Updated: 2014-11-07
Packaged: 2018-02-24 10:40:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2578604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardspiritanimals/pseuds/awkwardspiritanimals
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Jemma,” Fitz hisses, and kicks something towards her. It sends up sparks as it crosses the floor, distracting the Hydra goon long enough for her to grab at it before she looks at what it is. And then suddenly she’s holding Captain America’s shield, which feels somewhat sacrilegious, but she doesn’t have much time to dwell on the subject, because two distinct pings sound as bullets strike the shield and the Hydra agent is standing nearly above her.</p><p>Fitz, Simmons, and Captain America’s shield</p>
            </blockquote>





	the true shield

Captain Rogers had come to the team asking for help taking down a Hydra facility he suspected had records that might help him with his search for Sergeant Barnes, and it wasn’t like Coulson could turn down the chance to take down a known Hydra base, especially if it also meant a chance to help his childhood hero.

It had really been going rather well until about five minutes ago, when all hell had broken loose. Now, Jemma’s hiding behind a desk while Fitz does the same thing across the aisle and the rest of the team engages a gang of Hydra agents at the other end of the room, and there’s a man moving towards their hiding spot, gun clearly trained on her.

“Jemma,” Fitz hisses, and kicks something towards her. It sends up sparks as it crosses the floor, distracting the Hydra goon long enough for her to grab at it before she looks at what it is. And then suddenly she’s holding Captain America’s shield, which feels somewhat sacrilegious, but she doesn’t have much time to dwell on the subject, because two distinct pings sound as bullets strike the shield and the Hydra agent is standing nearly above her.

It’s a split second decision, and the shield is not so much heavy as it is big and unwieldy, but she forces herself up with all the strength in her legs, ducking behind it as she rises. There’s a crack as it meets the Hydra agent’s arm and a clatter as his gun falls, and then Jemma shifts her weight forward with as much force as she can manage, and the man drops as the shield smashes into his helmet.

“Jemma!” Fitz calls, pulling her away from staring down at the unconscious form in front of her to see another black clad figure moving towards Fitz, who has ducked underneath the desk he’d been hiding behind. She crosses the aisle at a crouch, hiding behind the shield, and tries to pull it behind her to close off the opening of the desk. It’s huge though, and she can’t grab the leather strap to maneuver it all the way around as the Hydra agent rounds the desk, smirk visible below his goggles. He raises his gun as he stands above them, and Jemma goes to look towards Fitz, eyes wide, wanting to say something, anything, but struck silent by the look of determination in his eyes.

Fitz snakes a foot out, kicking at the other man’s ankle with more force than Jemma would have guessed he was capable of, and the Hydra agent crashes down against the shield, which Fitz has reached to pull over her back, the edge biting into the wood of the desk over their heads. The sounds of the fight at the other end of the room continue, but Jemma feels distant from them, closed into the dark little bubble of the desk, huddled close to Fitz.

Until she realizes that she’s got the bulletproof shield at her back, while Fitz only has the thin, distinctly not bulletproof metal of the desk at his, which is where the fight is taking place. Jemma tries to shift, to turn them so that Fitz is protected by the shield on one side and her on the other, but his voice in her ear stops her.

“Jemma Abigail Simmons, don’t you dare.”

“Fitz-”

“No. This time, you’re going to stay over there and let me protect you for once.”

She’s quiet for a moment: “You’ve protected me before.”

“Good. You’re going to let me do it again.”

Quiet again, until she whispers, “Thank you,” into his ear, lips brushing against it so she can feel the blood rushing under the thin skin, can feel how warm he is. She presses her face against his shoulder, breathes in the familiar smell of him; his arms are wrapped around her so he can hold the shield in place by the straps, and she sinks into him for a few seconds as the sounds of the fight spill into the hallway and dim.

Fitz sighs, “We should probably-”

“Yes. Captain Rogers probably needs his shield back.”

“Yeah.”

He pushes and the shield pops out of the grooves it had cut into the desk, allowing him to drop one of the straps and shift it to the side so she could back out. Jemma reaches down and takes the shield so he can follow her, slipping her arm through the straps without thinking.

“Um, did you want to carry it?” she asks, when she realizes what she’s done, gesturing at the shield. Fitz, still on his knees after crawling out from under the desk, shakes his head.

“No. My hands won’t stay steady enough, I don’t think. Besides,” he says, grinning up at her, and she will never get used to him looking at her like that, “It suits you.”

She blushes, reaching down with her free arm to help him to his feet, “Follow me, then?”

“As long as you’ll let me. Always,” Fitz says, and this time Jemma hides her blush by rolling her eyes, tugging on his hand as she sets off across the room. They round the first corner in the hallway and almost crash directly into a Hydra agent. She swings the shield without thinking, and the man crumples as it connects with his helmet; two more agents are dispatched in a similar fashion as they make their way towards the continued sounds of fighting, and she’s starting to think that they may be on the clear when they duck down a hallway and find themselves face-to-face with three armed Hydra agents.

Jemma’s hand loosens from around the shield’s strap in surprise, and Fitz, standing next to her, catches it as it falls off her arm. The agents seem surprised to see the plain clothes scientists walking around with Captain America’s shield, which buys the two of them precious seconds. She glances over at Fitz, holding the shield and muttering to himself; Jemma is entirely sure she doesn’t like the look in his eyes. His hand wraps around the rim of the disc and he smirks, still muttering.

She figures out what he’s planning to do just as he raises the shield to chest height with some effort.

“Leopold Fitz, don’t you dar-”

“Too late,” he says, and throws the shield with a grunt.

It wobbles rather distinctly and bounces off the walls twice before hitting the first Hydra agent, but it still does what she assumes Fitz meant it to do, cutting down all three of the black clad figures in their way before clattering to the ground further down the hallway. Fitz whoops as they rush forward to grab it, scooping it up and looking at it with glee.

“Fitz! Don’t throw things that don’t belong to you!” Jemma scolds.

He looks at her with disbelief, “Did you miss the part where my brilliant plan just took out all the bad guys?”

“Brilliant plan? You didn’t even get it to come back to you! What if something had happened to it? Do you want to be the one to explain that to Captain Rogers? Or to Coulson?”

Fitz rolls his eyes, “I’m sorry that, running for my life and lacking Captain Rogers’ experience and enhanced strength, all I managed to do was complete complex physics equations in my head and then take all the bad guys out at once with my _brilliant plan_.”

Jemma glares, “Don’t throw things that don’t belong to you.”

He smirks, which is infuriating, but then his expression softens and he helps her slip the shield back on to her arm, which is rather the opposite of infuriating. They continue towards the sounds of a dying fight, bursting into a hangar-like room to find the team and Captain Rogers dispatching with the last of the Hydra agents still at the base. The two of them stand in the doorway, waiting for the others to notice them, the shield on Jemma’s arm, Fitz’s hand gripping the edge to help her hold it up.

Coulson and Skye stare in disbelief; May smirks, just barely, and Trip grins, though he looks like he’s having trouble staying on his feet and there’s a line of blood dripping down the side of his face. Captain Rogers rushes over to them.

“We thought you might want this,” Jemma says, holding out the shield with Fitz’s help. The size and weight has made her arm feel fairly rubbery. The captain accepts it with a grin.

“Thank you. We were worried about the two of you,” he says, suddenly serious.

“We were worried about all of you. We were the ones with the bulletproof shield, after all,” Fitz responds, standing to his full height, and Rogers laughs.

“You manage to take out any bad guys on your way here?” he asks.

“Um, eight, I think?” Jemma says, turning to Fitz for confirmation, and Captain Rogers jaw drops when he nods, “We’re sorry that it got a little dinged up. Nothing serious, but the paint might need to be redone.”

He stares at them in disbelief for a few seconds before looking the shield over, “You know, I think I might keep them for a while. Kind of a souvenir. You guys did a good job with it, it seems.”

Jemma blushes, and she can see Fitz doing the same next to her.

“Really, Captain-”

“You should call me Steve,” he says, and Jemma loses what she was going to say. Behind the captain, Coulson looks like he’s about to pass out.

———————

Jemma holds onto Fitz’s hand all the way back to the Bus, unwilling to let go of him quite yet, not that Fitz is complaining. They go their separate ways only once they reach the plane. Trip has taken over much of the first aid for the team, but he’d taken a rifle butt to the head and that role fell to Jemma for the day. She gives him a concussion test, an ice packet, and a promise to tell him about how it felt to use the shield once they’ve both gotten some rest, and then wanders into the lounge to find Fitz sitting in one corner of the couch, already nodding off.

When he smiles at her softly, she crosses the room and curls up next to him, up on her knees so that, since he’s slumped down slightly, she’s a little taller than him. He’s looking at her in that way that makes her breath catch in her throat again, and Jemma studies him for a few seconds, remembering the look in his eyes when he’d thrown the shield and the one when he’d helped slip it back onto her arm, and she leans down just enough to press her lips against his softly. She pulls back after a few seconds, but lingers close enough that she can feel the little sigh he makes against her mouth, the way his lips turn up in a grin.

“What?”

“Nothing. It’s just, I knew you were impressed by my brilliant plan to throw the shield.”

“Shut up,” she says, and kisses him again, longer this time. His hand comes up to slip beneath her hair, resting warm against the back of her neck; when she pulls back this time, he extends his arm to wrap around her shoulders and she rests her head against his, pressing her face into his sweater and taking a deep breath. They’re quiet for a few minutes before Fitz speaks again.

“That was fun. We should do that more often.”

“Running for our lives and fighting bad guys with a piece of American history?”

“No. Kissing,” he says, resting his head against hers.

“You’re so tired you probably won’t even remember that when you wake up. You’ll think it was a dream.” Fitz gives a short laugh; Jemma can feel the puff of air against her hair, the slight vibration of it in his chest.

“Whatever you need to tell yourself, Jemma,” he says, and she pinches his thigh until he catches her fingers with his, tangling them together. She lets him.

Coulson bursts into the room five minutes later, full of questions, about what they thought they were doing, getting separated from the team like that, about what it was like to hold the shield, about _he said you should call him Steve_. He finds them, curled up together on the couch, asleep, heads titled together, holding hands. He smiles and leaves them to their nap, figuring his questions can wait at least a few hours.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written primarily because, um, who doesn’t love the idea of Fitzsimmons with Cap’s shield? Like are there people you are like ‘yeah, no, that holds no interest for me?’ Why do those people hate fun?
> 
> Also because Jemma Simmons clearly is Captain America. Which makes Fitz some weird combination of Bucky Barnes and the little shit part of Steve, the idiot part that fights dude six times his size in alleys and thinks 'throwing his fucking shield is a good idea, that is supposed to protect you, you little shit stop throwing it.' Leopold Fitz is the stupid part of Captain America.
> 
> The title (which is admittedly kind of lame) comes from a quote by Morihei Ueshiba: “Your spirit is the true shield.”
> 
> Jemma’s middle name is Abigail because, once again, I’m headcanoning hard that Fitzsimmons are the reincarnated souls of John and Abigail Adams, and their parents, somehow sensing this, gave them the appropriate middle names. No, I will never shut up about this headcanon. Jemma Abigail and Leopold John have such a nice ring to them.


End file.
